2015-01-11

Soviet (and post-Soviet) 135 film SLRs

My project to assess the production numbers of all classical 135 film SLRs
is still alive (to jump to the general overview and links to all other
parts click here). Today's post is about all the cameras made
in the former USSR and (after its dissolution) the respective post-Soviet
states. There are only three factories/companies, which actually produced
135-type SLR cameras. The biggest one is KMZ (Красногорский
механический завод,Krasnogorsk Mechanical Works) located in Russia close to
Moscow. The smallest one is Arsenal in Kiev/Ukraine, normally known for
their Contax RF copies named after the town Kiev. The third is
BelOMO
(formerly MMZ) in Minsk/Belarus.KMZ (Красногорский
механический завод,Krasnogorsk Mechanical Works) located in Russia All of them
weren't actual competitors, they even cooperated and exchanged technologies
and got their orders for production and development from a central
administration in Moscow.

KMZ was
the first Soviet producer to build an 135 film SLR. They took
their Zorki RF and added a mirror cage. Result is a remarkable well
designed and small SLR, called Zenit. After this KMZ continued to develop new Zenit
models, a total of about more than 30. However, most of
them have many features and also design elements in common and they
can easily be grouped into about 10 bigger groups. Fortunately, KMZ
reported all their production numbers and they still can be found on the internet today. Therefore
this part is one of the most accurate of my entire assessments
(with a total of 13,743,440 cameras).KMZ war der erste der sovietischen Hersteller mit
einer KB-Spiegelreflex. Sie nahmen einfach ihre Zorki
Messsucherkamera und erweiterten diese um einen Spiegelkasten.
Resultat war die bemerkenswert wohlgeformte und kompakte SLR mit
dem Namen Zenit. Danach entwicklete KMZ eine lange Folge
weiterer Zenit Modelle, insgesamt mehr als 30. Weil viele von ihnen gemeinsame
Merkmale aufweisen oder sich sehr ähnlich sind, lassen sie
sich einfach als 10 größere Gruppen betrachten.
Glücklicherweise hat KMZ sher gut über ihre Produktion
Buch geführt und ide Zahl der produyierten Kameras läßt sich heute noch im Internet finden.
Daher ist dieser Teil eines der genauesten meines gesamten
Projektes (mit 13.743.440 KMZ Kameras).

As
accurate the KMZ numbers are, the MMZ/Belomo numbers are definitely
the least accurate of all my estimates, although Belomo just took
some of the successful Zenit cameras from KMZ and continued to
produce them in huge quantities (they've probably been ordered to
do so). Especially the 5 million of the Zenit E I could not
believe in first, and I still have my doubts. However, I found
multiple souces, claiming that the Zenit E series (KMZ and MMZ
together) has been build in more than 12 million units (8 for the E + 4 for the ET) , making this the
highest production number of any 135 film SLR in the world. The
total SLR production of MMZ/Belomo I've estimated to be 9.1 million
+/- 0.5 million).So akurat die
KMZ Zahlen auch sind, die MMZ/Belomo Zahlen sind die betimmt
ungenaueste Schätzung des gesamten Projekts. Das liegt daran,
dass Belomo einfach große Mengen and KMZ-Zenit SLR nachgebaut
bzw. quasi in Lohn gefertigt hat. Nur leider wurde nicht wirklich
genau Buch geführt. Zunächst konnte ich die 5 Millionen
für die Zenit E nicht glauben, aber verschiedene Quellen
besagen, dass KMZ und MMZ zusammen über 12 Millionen Einheiten
gebaut haben (genauer 8 mio von der E und 4 von der ET), was bedeuten
würde, dass die Zenit E/ET die häufigste SLR der Welt
ist. Die Gesamtproduktion von Belomo/MMZ habe ich auf 9,1 +/-
0.5 Millionen abgeschätzt.

My most important source is the very comprehensive website Sovietcams.com, which reports most of the information from
other sources in a nice and informative way. Other sources were USSRPhoto.com, Tigers Lair (repair manuals...),ACP, ...In
total there are about 23 million (+/- 0.5 million) 135 film SLRs produced
in Russia and Belarus, within the time frame of 52 years (1952-2004). Most
of them probably stayed within the former Soviet Union, although there was
significant export into the capitalistic West as almost from every model a
variant can be found with Roman instead of Cyrillic letters. However, I
could not find a percentage (or the like) how much have been exported.
Interestingly, the production number distribution goes in-line with the
world wide development. The 1980íes were THE SLR decade, world wide
as well as in the USSR most of these cameras have been produced and sold
within this ten years.

When KMZ started producing SLRs in 1952 they were technologically in-line
with German and later Japanese companies. During the late 50ies and early
60ies there was even some innovation coming from Russian camera engineers.
However, over the decades they lost more and more contact to their western
competitors. Automation and other innovation did arrive much later if at
all. Some say Zenit or Kiev cameras from the late 1990ies would have been
quite competitive in Western markets if offered in the mid 1970ies.